Introduction

This is the Planning Quality Framework report for Council councilc.
It tells the story of the performance of the council's Planning Service taking account of:

Facts; real-time data on planning applications.

Part 1 The Work Profile

Part 2 The Outcomes

Part 3 Value / Non-Value Work

Part 4 Fees, Resources and Investment

Part 5 Process

Opinion; what customers say about the planning service
[section tbc]

Practice: how the service is delivered and goes about negotiating the best developments and outcomes
[section tbc]

The report includes some bar charts, line graphs and boxplots guide to box plots. In the line graphs your council is represented by the thicker coloured line and its average is the thick red line. The overall 'trend' is indicated by the thicker, darker grey background.

The report has individual sections which are useful but on their own don't tell the whole story. The real story emerges when different parts of the report are knitted together. For example, how many councils, in response to a performance culture based on speed and targets, have carried out expensive process reviews just to make quicker decisions, and fail to notice that they say yes more than their peers, create less waste and have happier customers? That is the essence of this report - a much more rounded story of what is happening and what direction things are heading in.

PART 1 - The Work Profile

This shows the different kinds and volumes of development the Planning Service handles, how it receives applications, and the fee income.

1a Application counts

Purpose: Understanding the volume of applications for each type of development over the last 18 months

For review:

What is most of the work? Usually it's small and householder applications.

Do the volumes look right? If not, could it be that data is missing? Check, in particular, that you and your peers are recording conditions in the same way.

Do your priorities, processes and practices reflect the variety / volume of the work? Could you standardise/streamline more of the routine work or ?allocate resources differently? Is project and improvement work targeted at the right things?

1b. Application Counts/ Fee Comparator

Purpose: To understand how your work and fee income compares with your peers.

This is the count and fee income of applications received, grouped into categories. This is an 18 month figure:

The same information as a table:

type

councila

councilb

councilc

councild

Adverts

62

1

118

85

Conditions

393

0

414

0

heritage

308

53

87

33

Householder

978

568

1082

982

MajorMajor

13

38

33

69

Minor

712

886

585

860

MinorMajor

9

24

84

0

NMA

0

1

0

65

prior

4

0

41

0

Use

222

87

191

76

cert

0

1

0

0

trees

0

85

0

1

## [1] "Fees associated with these applications"

type

councila

councilb

councilc

councild

Adverts

1086

6

859

1040

Conditions

41629

0

44787

0

heritage

18270

53

113

78

Householder

35336

17552

32592

30755

MajorMajor

606

2147

2092

3953

Minor

51088

49553

34460

50884

MinorMajor

1185

1615

5430

0

NMA

0

46

0

187

prior

469

0

3652

0

Use

18510

6192

13420

5518

cert

0

127

0

0

trees

0

117

0

1

For review:

Is your application and/or fee profile very different to your peers? Is this expected? Are they doing something differently? Are these the right councils to compare with?

Are your peers seeing more of a particular type of development than you? Again, is this what you'd expect? Is there something happening in other places you could learn from?

Do the applications / fees mix represent any risk? Does a large proportion fees come from a small number of applications? Are you managing this risk appropriately ?

1c. Applications over time

Purpose: To understand how the counts of the various sorts of applications is changing over time

For review:

Is there a a rise/fall in the numbers of certain development types? Does this correspond with your fee profile? Have the changes to permitted development had any affect?

Are there any surprises/new things happening? Is the 'market' moving in a particular way?

If there is a trend and it continues, how might this affect things? How will your fee profile change? Is your skills base going to need to change? your fee profile over the next few quarters?

Have you 'geared up' / formed teams to do certain types of work? How might this affect things?

PART 2 - The Outcomes

This part of the report looks at how many and which types of development proposals get approved.

2a. Approval Rates

Purpose: What types of development are we saying 'yes' to and how often?

This is the same information broken out by development category. Figures are in %

type

councila

councilb

councilc

councild

Adverts

97

100

91

92

Conditions

99

0

99

0

heritage

97

89

99

100

Householder

98

90

93

91

MajorMajor

90

79

89

95

Minor

91

81

81

76

MinorMajor

50

83

88

0

NMA

0

100

0

97

prior

100

0

97

0

Use

89

85

83

80

cert

0

100

0

0

trees

0

23

0

100

For review:

What is the overall trend? Are you granting more permissions? How might these messages be relayed to stakeholders?

Does the overall percentage obscure some low numbers ? E.g. are certain types of development always controversial, and you are saying yes to more and more of these?

Do your approval rates differ significantly from your peers on a particular type of development? What might be happening elsewhere that you can learn from?

PART 3 - Value / Non-Value Work

This part of the report looks at how much work gets withdrawn and how much additional work results from the original application e.g discharge of conditions.

3a. Withdrawal Rates

Purpose: Rates of withdrawal are a 'waste' indicator. Where possible they should be reduced to near zero.

This is the same information broken out by development category. Figures are in %.

x

councila

councilb

councilc

councild

Adverts

4

0

8

12

Conditions

1

0

5

0

heritage

9

11

9

29

Householder

3

5

6

6

MajorMajor

0

8

7

7

Minor

9

5

7

9

MinorMajor

0

0

14

0

NMA

0

0

0

8

prior

0

0

67

0

Use

5

5

10

15

cert

0

0

0

0

trees

0

1

0

0

For review:

What is the overall trend ? Are you trying anything to bring rates of withdrawal down? Is it working? Are there particular categories of development that suffer more ?

What are withdrawn applications costing you?* For most category of applications, the fee does not cover the cost of processing them. A withdrawn application represents cost of processing the application to the point it is withdrawn, and then there is the potential for a 'free go' (see Part 3 - non-heritage zero fee applications). Is there anything to be done ?

Why are applications getting withdrawn? How many occur at the request of the council? What do your developer community think ?

3c. Non-heritage and non-tree applications zero fee

For review:

Why are we receiving applications without a fee for non-heritage applications? Zero fee applications can follow previous withdrawns.

PART 4 - Fees, resources and investment

This part of the report looks at the investment value that development proposals represent, and how well matched the resources (FTEs) are to the volumes of work

Purpose: The following 3 plots follow the same form. These plots are organised by when the application is received (not determined).

4a. Fees received per quarter

For review:

How is the market behaving ? You already know your income from fees. This plot whows you how other planning departments are faring so you can see whether changes are part of a trend.

4b. Headcount estimate

[note these values need adjusting down for the category of application within development type]

Do not use this yet !

The 'FTE estimate' plot is based on PAS 2012 Benchmark data.

For review:

How does the FTE estimate compare to reality? What might account for significant differences? You should compare notes with your peers and help refine our time allowances for each class of application (you can see the values we've used for your report at the end of the technical appendix)

What is the overall FTE trend? Does this correspond with the volumes of applications you are receiving (Section 1)?

What do these numbers tell you about resourcing the department properly ? Are there opportunities to re-focus resources?

4c. Investment estimate over time

The 'Investment estimate' plot is based on the build costs for different types of development - these are just PAS estimates for now so are illustrative only.
Estimated cost of work means an estimate accepted by the local authority as being a reasonable amount that would be charged by a person in business to carry out such work (as per building control)

For review:

Development Investment - what are the significant messages? The investment value will represent a significant ?sum and will put a perspective on many decisions facing the service - each planning consent results in some form of inward investment..

What do the trends (rising/falling) mean for your place? Is there any significance between this and fee income (e.g. considering future resources available)? Is there a significance regarding the FTE estimate (e.g. are you resourced to handle a growing upward trend, might you have to re-focus resources to account for a downward trend)?

PART 5 - Process

This section of the report focuses on processing times - summarising how long the validation and determination of applications took.

5a. How much work is valid on day 1 ?

Purpose: Shows the proportion of applications received that can be worked on straight away.

The same figures as a table. Numbers are % valid on day 1 (this sometimes includes delays matching applications up with their payments)

type

councila

councilb

councilc

councild

Adverts

45

100

25

33

Conditions

60

0

56

0

heritage

51

98

37

37

Householder

63

98

42

52

MajorMajor

73

100

30

45

Minor

53

98

26

30

MinorMajor

89

100

33

0

NMA

0

100

0

92

prior

50

0

74

0

Use

55

99

29

30

cert

0

100

0

0

trees

0

93

0

100

For review:

The proportion of applications that are invalid. Anything above your line on the graph is the %age of applications that are invalid on receipt. This represents avoidable time and cost to make them valid.

How do you compare with your peers? Is there anything you could learn from those achieving a higher proportion of valid applications?

What is causing invalid applications. Don't assume that invalid applications are the sole fault of the applicant/agent. Consider whether your validation procedures, processes , consistency and customer guidance are as good as they could be.

What are your applicants and agents saying? Look over Customer Feedback Section XXXX, is there anything in there that could indicate what the problem with validation might be (e.g. poor guidance, inability to contact a member of staff for advice, inconsistent advice).

Are particularly catgories of applications more likely to be invalid than others? Might there be a need for some proactive work with applicants, or better on-line guidance.

5b. Days to make Valid

Purpose: Shows the number of days it takes for applications to be made valid. A box-plot displays a range of values (days here). If you can't see a line in the middle of the box plot then your median value is zero (that means that at least half of the applications received are made valid on the day they arrive which is good).

For review:

The green and blue boxes represent the majority of applications. These boxes represent what happens most frequently.

The boxes represent a range of days. The range is the lowest and highest number of days it can take for the majority of applications to be made valid.

Are the heights of the boxes inconsistent e.g. up and down? The more erratic the picture, the more inconsistent and uncertain the picture for the customer.

Do any of the quarters stand out as particularly different (better or worse)?

Are the heights of the boxes getting smaller over time (taking less time) or taller (taking longer)? Have you taken any action that might be causing this to happen?

This represents avoidable time and cost to the council and applicants. It doesn't affect National Indicator statistics (the clock starts ticking once the case has been made valid). BUT it all adds to the customer's wait for a decision.

5c. Queue time

Purpose: Delays matter to applicants. The queue time is just the average time to make valid times the number of applications. This helps prioritise the biggest aggregate queue. This may not be the longest period - it is strongly correlated to the most frequent applications.

dev_group

count

ave_days

queue_time

Householder

934

12

10917

Minor

469

17

8182

Use

149

17

2579

Conditions

289

6

1601

Adverts

98

15

1467

heritage

78

12

954

MinorMajor

58

16

930

MajorMajor

27

20

527

prior

37

3

107

For review:

This table breaks down validation per development type. The average of the days taken is multiplied out by the number of applications received. This is to show where the biggest amount of time is.

5d. Days from declared Valid to Decision issued

Purpose: Shows the number of days between applications being declared valid and a decision notice being issued.

For review: As previous box plot plus

Are the 8/13 week targets driving decision making times or do you driven by 'what is the ealiest I can issue the decision'? Narrow green/blue boxes clustered close to the 56 day mark are an indicator of target-driven decision making. A lower edge to the box indicates that decisions are issued early.

5e. Days from Receipt to Decision issued

Purpose: Shows the number of days between applications being received and a decision notice being issued.

dev_group

count

valid_days

NI_days

endtoend

Adverts

98

15

58

71

Conditions

289

6

60

65

heritage

78

12

60

70

Householder

934

12

56

68

MajorMajor

27

20

100

119

Minor

469

17

64

82

MinorMajor

58

16

107

127

prior

37

3

40

49

Use

149

17

59

75

For review: As previous plus

How much difference is there between your reported performance stats (NI_days) and the customers experience (endtoend)?

Appendix

This will help you check that the volumes of data per quarter are correct and the correct chunk of time.

Some of the trends and averages will mislead if the datasets cover different ranges, and if quarters don't have 4 weeks of data the graphs in your reports may also mislead.

received_quarter

received_month

councila

councilb

councilc

councild

Q13

37

159

106

142

119

Q13

38

160

99

159

105

Q13

39

143

98

130

120

Q14

40

155

112

157

154

Q14

41

153

80

147

117

Q14

42

120

85

137

110

Q15

43

161

88

148

125

Q15

44

135

82

145

126

Q15

45

122

71

116

109

Q16

46

130

95

147

110

Q16

47

162

93

125

113

Q16

48

146

85

138

133

Q17

49

152

106

147

129

Q17

50

146

117

149

110

Q17

51

179

115

178

112

Q18

52

188

115

175

127

Q18

53

159

74

135

119

Q18

54

131

123

160

133

This is the same information by development type.

dev_group

councila

councilb

councilc

councild

Adverts

62

1

118

85

Conditions

393

0

414

0

heritage

308

53

87

33

Householder

978

568

1082

982

MajorMajor

13

38

33

69

Minor

712

886

585

860

MinorMajor

9

24

84

0

NMA

0

1

0

65

prior

4

0

41

0

Use

222

87

191

76

cert

0

1

0

0

trees

0

85

0

1

Colophon

This is a draft report for the Planning Quality Framework. It is version 0.6 last changed on 2014-09-03. It was generated on 2014-11-10.